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DOI: 10.4172/2472-0518.1000126

ISSN: 2472-0518

Research Article
Research Article Open
OpenAccess
Access

Understanding the Problems and Challenges of Polymer Flooding

Technique
Jie Xiao*, Guibiao Qiao
Holding Energy Petroleum Engineering,(BeiJing)Co., Ltd, China

Abstract
Polymer flooding has been widely used to address the problems of high mobility ratio or high reservoir
heterogeneity in water flooding operations. It reduces the surface tension between oil and water and release trapped
oil and makes oil easier to produce. However, polymers tend to reside in formation due to precipitation, adsorption,
mechanical entrapment, or even degradation. This study analyzed those formation damage problems in polymer
flooding and provided suggestions on how to design an effective polymer flooding treatment to minimize the potential
formation damage issues. Results show that the polymer solution (polymer and brine) can affect the nature of strain
in different systems and thus influence regains permeability. To minimize the damage effect of polymer retention or
polymer plugging, core flow tests should be designed to incorporate the effect of different parameters.

Keywords: Polymer flooding; Formation damage; Regained perme-
ability; EOR
Introduction
The nature of polymer flooding is to use polymer agent to be func-
tion as a mobility control agent to provide better displacement and vol-
umetric sweep efficiencies during flooding treatments. The efficiency of
polymer flood is believed to be in the range of 0.7-1.75 lb polymer per
bbl of incremental oil production. The target zone of polymer flooding
is the remaining oil saturation above the residual oil saturation [1-5].
Polymer flooding has been successfully applied in all different types
of reservoirs and provides huge amount of recovered oil production in
petroleum industry. It is simple and efficient, compared with other en-
hanced oil recovery techniques [6,7]. It can be also applied in some spe-
cial cases, such as heavy oil reservoir with low viscosity where steam as-
sisted gravity drainage is not suitable. To be able to fully understand the
problems and challenges during polymer flooding, this study presents
its intrinsicproperties, effective strategies to design optimal parameters,
associated formation damage and polymer plugging problems, and in-
jection issues in polymer flooding [8-12].
sult, formation damage can occur. Therefore, core flow tests should be
conducted to examine the potential formation damage problems dur-
ing polymer flooding processes prior to field application [18,19]. The
adsorption in polymer flooding can be severe, as it is irreversible and
the adsorbed polymer occupies a large pore volume. In this case, it is
hard to recover a considerable amount of oil and the formation per-
meability is decreased, leading to less recovery factor. The stability of
polymer solution during polymer flooding has been a issue due to its
degradation. It can be chemical degradation through oxidation or effect
of ionic ions. Mechanical degradation refers to the macromolecules are
sheared at high flow rate, close to wall region. Biological degradation
commonly occurs in biopolymers, for example, HPAM is the nutrition
source for SRB. Additionally, some polymers will change their volume

Properties of Polymer Flooding

It is widely believed that polymer solution behaves as pseudo-
plastic fluids at intermediate shear rates while behave like Newtonian
fluids at low or high shear rates. As in the high shear rate, all the mac-
romolecules are oriented along the flow direction and thus reduce the
viscosity. Figure 1 provides the structure of three typical polymers used
in polymer flooding. In the field, synthetic polymers or biopolymers
are used in polymer flooding. Polymer flooding is generally applied in
reservoir with oil viscosity below 150 cp (preferable 10-100 cp) or API
gravity above 15 [13]. The matrix permeability should be above 10 md.
Reservoir temperature is in the range of 176 to 210°F. The clay content
inthe reservoir should be low. Low salinity of the injection and reservoir
brines are favorable for higher recovery factor. In the field, back pro-
duced water is usually used for preparation of polymer solution as far
as the water can satisfy water quality specifications after chemical treat-
ment. However, one should note that potential damage may rise due to
the re-injected waters [14-17].
Problems Associated with Polymer Flooding
In polymer flooding, polymer can be retained in porous media
through precipitation, adsorption, or mechanical entrapment. As a re-
Figure 1: Structures of different polymers (a) HPAM (b) xanthan (c)
seleroglucan.
*Corresponding author: Jie Xiao, Consultant, Holding Energy Petroleum
Engineering, (BeiJing) Co., Ltd, China, Tel+ 010-88593266-817; E-mail:
info@smartpetrochem.com.
Received December 16, 2016; Accepted December 22, 2016; Published January
02, 2017
Citation: Xiao J, Qiao G (2017) Understanding the Problems and Challenges
of Polymer Flooding Technique. Oil Gas Res 3: 126. doi: 10.4172/2472-
0518.1000126
Copyright: © 2017 Xiao J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under
the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and
source are credited.

Oil Gas Res, an open access journal Volume 3 • Issue 1 • 1000126

ISSN: 2472-0518
Citation: Xiao J, Qiao G (2017) Understanding the Problems and Challenges of Polymer Flooding Technique. Oil Gas Res 3: 126. doi: 10.4172/2472-
0518.1000126
Figure 2: Regained permeability of different polymers in sandstone reservoir.
ratio or viscosities under different reservoir conditions [20-22]. As a
result of high rock retention, problem of formation damage can be se-
vere. The flow region is restricted, leading to high increase in external
viscosity. This further increase formation damage issues and make it is
hard to displace those retented polymer out of formation. Filtration of
gel from unfiltered polymer solution can also cause potential formation
damage problems as a slim skin is formed. According to experimental
studies, this filtration effect will reach equilibrium even after a continu-
ous increase of the pressure differential pressure [23-25].
Parameter Selection
The selection of parameters for polymer flooding is critical to a suc-
cessful chemical treatment. As polymer flooding is affected by many
factors, various design parameters need to be designed and optimized.
The parameters are affected by reservoir temperature, formation water
salinity, divalent contents, clay contents, oil viscosity, formation per-
meability, etc. [26-28]. Take the effect of properties of formation for
example, anionic polymers such as HPAM has a high adsorption rate in
carbonate reservoirs, so specific polymers are only suitable for specific
reservoir types. Heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs have a low perme-
ability matrix and are unsuitable for large molecule polymers. Different
polymers have different adsorption rate on different formation. Figure
2 shows the regained permeability comparison of different structures of
polymers. To minimize the retention effect, selection of polymer should
be based on vicosification/suspension properties. Branched polymers
should be selected as they have less reduced formation damage com-
pared with other polymers [29-32]. Sometimes, unsuitable polymer
may plug the formation. To solve this problem, the selection of polymer
should be based on the following factors: volume flux, core permeabil-
ity, hydrodynamic size of the polymer, and core mineralogy and surface
state [33].
Conclusions
Based on above discussion, the following conclusions can be drawn
from this study:
1. Rheological behavior of polymer solution in shear and extensional
flows affects the flow of a fluid in porous media, and thus the potential
for a fluid to reduce the permeability of a formation.
2. The polymer solution (polymer and brine) can affect the nature
of strain in different systems and thus influence regains permeability.
3. To minimize the damage effect of polymer retention or polymer
plugging, core flow tests should be designed to incorporate the effect of
different parameters.
Oil Gas Res, an open access journal
ISSN: 2472-0518
Page 2 of 3
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0518.1000126
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Oil Gas Res, an open access journal
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